Effective Business Writing

Audience:

This class is beneficial to everyone.

Prerequisites:

None

Description:

In business writing, the language is concrete, the point of view is clear, and the points are well expressed. Good writing is hard work, and even the best writers get discouraged. However, with practice you can feel more confident about your own writing. This one day workshop will give participants the tools to become better writers.

Course Objectives:

This one-day workshop teaches participants to:

• Make their writing clear, complete, concise, and correct.
• How to apply these skills in real world situations.
• Understanding the proper format for memos, letters, and e-mails.
• Deal with specific business requests.
• Create effective business cases, proposals, and reports.
• Thoroughly document sources that they use in their writing.

Outline:

Lesson 1: Course Overview

You will spend the first part of the day getting to know participants and discussing what will take place during the workshop. Students will also have an opportunity to identify their personal learning objectives.

Lesson 2: Understanding Grammar

Proper grammar is at the forefront of effective business writing. In this session, participants will review and practice the use of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and conjunctions. Common misused words, spelling errors, punctuation rules, and synonyms/antonyms/homonyms will also be discussed during this session.

Lesson 3: The C’s of Writing

All writing should be clear, concise, complete, and correct. We will look at each of these elements in detail during this session.

Lesson 4: Writing Mechanics

In this session, participants will take a close look at the proper length of paragraphs, what a paragraph should contain, and how to order paragraphs. Sentence formation, subject/verb agreement, verb tenses, and run-on sentences will accompany the writing mechanics in this session.

Lesson 5: Writing Business Letters

This session begins with three lectures on the steps for writing a business letter, types of letters, and the parts of a business letter. Participants will then examine samples of business letters to determine the type and the parts of each letter.

Lesson 6: Writing Effective E-mails

Virtually everyone today uses e-mail to communicate at work and at home. This session will give participants some tips on writing effective e-mails and managing mail.

Lesson 7: Writing Memos

Memos are another challenge that many writers face. We will examine memos through a brief lecture ad a fun exercise.

Lesson 8: Dealing with Specific Requests

Often people are asked to respond to a request for information or to write a particular letter (of recommendation, for example). We’ll discuss some tips to keep in mind when writing one of these particular documents. Participants will also get some hands-on practice with writing letters of request.

Lesson 9: Preparing Business Documents

Another common task is to write a business case, request for proposal, or a formal report. Where would you start? We will provide some guidelines that will help with these tasks.

Lesson 10: Editing Techniques

To conclude the workshop, participants will apply what they have learned to their own writing.

Lesson 11: Workshop Wrap-Up

At the end of the day, students will have an opportunity to ask questions and fill out an action plan.